The Clandestine Nation:

Indigenism and national subjects

of Bolivia in the films of Jorge Sanjins
by Leonardo Garca-Pabn
translated from the Spanish by Maura Furfey
In a speech delivered on receiving honors from the mayor
of Cochabamba in 1991 (July 19), Jorge Sanjins (1936- )
emphasized contemporary Bolivian societys strong racist and
discriminatory traits. The speech should not have surprised
any who knew his cinematographic work, which is essentially
political and also the most serious in Latin America in
approaching indigenous Andean cultures. New in his speech was
a slight allusion to class struggle in describing the
Bolivian situation (clearly times have changed) and a
vocabulary referring almost exclusively to a nations
construction rather than revolution. Sanjins spoke as
follows:
Far off is the construction of an organic nation,
without discrimination, racially and socially
integrated, in which all the people participate in the
mechanisms that generate decisions; this would be a
society that watches out for everyone without emotion,
furnishes justice and protection to everyone, and prides
itself in each person and may not be ashamed of anyone.
Certainly that nation is still distant.1
Sanjins speech, denouncing racism in Bolivia,
essentially calls its listeners to reflect on what it is to
be Bolivian or who is Bolivian. This question always seems
tedious and disturbing within a society where every effort of
the dominant classes to forge a civilized nation rests on
contempt for the indigenous.2 This preoccupation for what and
who is Bolivian in the framework of Bolivias racial and
cultural conflicts comprises the essence of Sanjins film,
The Clandestine Nation (La nacin clandestina,1989). However,
the movie has a much more complicated narrative than simply
denouncing racial, social, and economic injustices.
Sanjins film-production up to The Flags of Dawn (Las
banderas del amanecer, 1984) ended what the critic Carlos D.
Mesa called the filmmakers stage of political
radicalization, a stage that started with The Courage of the
People (El coraje del pueblo, 1971). Unlike that film, The
Clandestine Nation returns to certain characteristics of And

So It Is (Ukamau, 1966) and Blood of the Condor (Yawar

Mallku, 1969). Notable shifts here include the reappearance
of the individual protagonist in place of a collective one;
the abandonment of the techniques of Brechtian distancing, in
which the presence of a narrator sets the stage for the
events, as in The Principal Enemy (El enemigo principal,
1973) and Get Out (Fuera de aqu, 1977); and the use of
documentary techniques as in The Flags of Dawn.3 These
changes imply the coming together of the two stages of
Sanjins work, those from before and after The Courage of
the People.
Although Sanjins cited lecture is distinct in his tone
to his own previous declarations -- for example, those in his
book Teora y prctica de un cine junto al pueblo -- his
intellectual and aesthetic position is still as political and
committed to socially marginalized groups interests. In The
Clandestine Nation, Sanjins displaces the narrative tension
previously dealing with the external conflict between
indigenous community and state power (including U.S.
imperialism) toward delineating the effects such conflict
provokes inside the indigenous subject. In other words,
denouncing the principal enemy has not dropped from
Sanjins political scene, but The Clandestine Nation now
analyzes and reveals that enemy as shaping individual
behaviors. Likewise in aesthetic terms, the directors
abandoning certain techniques does not mean his abandoning
his basic postulate: a cinema of the people. On the
contrary, Sanjins still searches for ways to use a cinema
whose language has as its base an integral-sequence-shot -the basic concept of Sanjins aesthetics -- which permits
him to reflect indigenous cultures visual perception and
world view.
The Clandestine Nation, therefore, introduces new
elements that indicate Sanjins films political evolution
and aesthetic maturity. In this sense, the film notably
proposes the indigenous community/state relation in different
terms. To do that, the film adopts as a protagonist a
character doubly-marginalized -- as much by his culture of
origin as by an urban westernized world.
Tradition and rupture of literary indigenism
One can better appreciate the importance of The
Clandestine Nation in Sanjins cinematic development in the
light of how literary indigenism has evolved in the Andean

geographical and cultural area. On the surface, Sanjins

film-work seems to have few Latin American aesthetic
antecedents. Critics have mostly discussed the aesthetic
influence of Italian neorealism (Hess) and the political
influence of Marxism (Gumucio Dagrn; Carlos D. Mesa). And
few other filmmakers have profoundly tried to approach the
indigenous world. Yet there is an underlying intertextual
referent of Sanjins work: indigenist literature. There are
striking parallelisms between indigenist literary works and
Sanjins movies.
In this light, Sanjins first two feature films, And So
It Is and Blood of the Condor, develop themes and have points
of view consonant with the indigenism of Alcides Arguedas and
of Jorge Icaza in Huasipungo (1934). Especially And So It Is,
which narrates the rape and death of an indigenous woman at
the hands of a mestizo in a community on the banks of the
Lake Titikaka, has a strong resemblance to Alcides Arguedas
Raza de bronce (1945), a novel that also narrates the rape
and assassination of an Indian woman in a location close to
the same lake. From an ideological perspective, both works
portray the indigenous people as the victims of abuses by
whites and mestizos. Both continue to utilize the colonial
metaphor of rape, in which the Indian woman symbolizes the
violent exploitation of America and its native cultures.
Also, both the literary text and the film resolve the
conflict by depicting isolated acts of revenge, which neither
bind themselves to the historic origins of social conflict
nor open the doors to possible social and/or political
solutions.
Perhaps A. Arguedas had a better perception of these
conflicts historical roots. For example, in Raza de bronce
the rape is perpetrated by white landowners, which more
clearly indicates the principal enemy, while in the movie,
the rape is carried out by a mestizo, who only serves the
landholders power. Also, in the literary text the Indians
get revenge through a community revolt, the level of which
reflects social and historic tension, while Sanjins places
the revenge at the level of the individual in an incident
without many social connotations.
However, Sanjins does not repeat A. Arguedas
ideologically.4 Luis Espinal, for example, writes,
The final fight, with the isolated men in the
middle of the Andean high plateau (Altiplano), is a

symbol of class struggle. That is the underlying

reason why the movie also emphasizes the
parallelism between the act of stealing his wife
and the act of stealing the fruit of his labor; the
rapist and the exploiter are the same person (316).
Although to make the mestizo the representative of a class
relies on an inexact generalization,5 Espinals criticism
aptly notes that Sanjins raises the implicit idea that
economic exploitation is the cause of violence against the
Indians; this is better than pretending, as A. Arguedas
suggests, that a bad patron causes the violence and that a
change in the exploiters personality would change the
Indians condition. For the same reason, the assertion of
some critics (Gumucio Dagrn 227; Carlos D. Mesa 85) that And
So It Is seems an arguedian movie does not take into
account that Sanjins breaks with A. Arguedas at a decisive
point, in particular in the way the filmmaker recreates the
Indians narrative, psychological, and cultural time.
In fact, what distinguishes Sanjins from A. Arguedas is
the construction of narrative time, and not only because the
two artists work in different narrative media. A. Arguedas
novel has a narrative based on action. From a campesinos
descent to the valleys to an indigenous womans rape and
death, each event provokes others and this chain provides the
books narrative framework. While Sanjins also utilizes
events in order to move the narration, he constructs a
cinematic style that places emphasis on time spent waiting.
As Espinal says,
All of And So It Is is a time of expectancy, like an
Aeschylus drama, with the profound taciturnity of a
campesino who seems to express himself only through his
quena [Indian flute] (135).
The importance the films narrative gives to expectancy does
not derive from an idealistic mythology of Indians, which
would portray them as being impenetrable and taciturn while
expecting who knows what destiny, but rather waiting
represents an important element in Sanjins whole aesthetic
project, which tries to understand and transmit the
experience of Aymara time. This is unthinkable in the
novelist A. Arguedas mentality, since he is limited by his
class position as wealthy landowner, and is one of the main
ways Sanjins and A. Arguedas differ in approaching the
Indian world. In Sanjins film, the narrators point of view

is partially constructed according to indigenous cultural

parameters. In other words, the filmmaker here tries to
introduce the Indian not only as an object of consideration,
which A. Arguedas and a good part of indigenist literature
did, but as a subject narrating the film itself. To do this,
in the tradition of Italian neorealism, Sanjins also
integrates indigenous actors in his movies. As a result,
Sanjins work does not so much explore indigenous psychology
(Espinal 135; Carlos D. Mesa 85) but recreate an Indian
subjects vision of the world.
During the production of Blood of the Condor, such an
exploration of Indian subjectivity encountered a decisive
moment. An anecdote told various times by Sanjins and by his
scriptwriter Oscar Soria is very significant in this aspect.
Sanjins tells how he was forced to rethink his method of
dialogue with the Kaata community where he went to film Blood
of the Condor. In the face of resistance from the community
to collaborate with those whites who called themselves
Bolivian but who didn't even know how to speak Quechua
(Sanjins, Teora y prctica 27), the film crew had to look
for support from a community Yatiri or fortune teller. In
Sanjins words:
We had come to the conclusion that it was inexcusable to
give an indication of humility proportional to the
preponderance, arrogance, and paternalism with which the
film crew had acted up until now within this ambiance in
which respect for peoples and traditions was
fundamental.
...
To humble ourselves before the verdict of a jaiwaco
ceremony [ceremony of offering and divination] -- which
would develop in the presence and under the vigilance of
all the members of the Kaata community -- became the
best means for not only appeasing the community, but for
obtaining its collective participation in deciding the
destiny of the work which this group proposed to do and
to accomplish it.6
In this way, only after the Yatiris favorable verdict could
the crew start the filming with the total, extended
collaboration of the community.
That which was seeded in And So It Is becomes explicit
and determinant in Blood of the Condor. Henceforth, Sanjins
develops a political-aesthetic which, he says, requires the

acquisition of a new, liberated, and liberating language,

[which] cannot be born except through penetrating,
investigating, and integrating oneself in the peoples
culture, which is alive and dynamic (Sanjins, Teora y
prctica 32). In the same way as Sanjins sought the
participation of indigenous actors, in his screenwriting he
seeks to create a narrator and a perspective constructed out
of cultural Indian elements. He understands the need to
communicate with social groups without using the strategies
employed by imperialist means of communication. For the
Bolivian filmmaker:
Communicability should not yield to simplistic exigency.
In order to transmit the content in its essence and
profundity, the creative process itself must be thought
through with a maximum of sensibility in order to grasp
and find the most elevated artistic resources that would
correspond culturally with the recipient. These should
also grasp those internal rhythms that would correspond
to the viewers mentality, sensibility, and vision of
reality.7
The integral-sequence shot
To convey the indigenous worlds mentality, sensibility,
and vision of reality is a principle that underlies all of
Sanjins work. Stylistically, his aesthetic formulation of
these principles is condensed into the previously mentioned
concept of the integral-sequence-shot. I must expand a bit on
this key concept. As Pedro Susz indicates, for Sanjins this
is the most adequate narrative resource for visual
translation of the circular conception of Aymara time (169).
This kind of sequence shot tries to integrate and make the
spectator participate in a narrative point of view common to
these recipients. Thus, in The Principal Enemy:
The movement of the camera only interpreted points of
view, so that the spectators dramatic needs could cease
to be it in order that the spectator transform
him/herself into a participant. Sometimes this sequence
shot moves to the close-up, respecting the distance that
would really be possible. This may mean opening up a
space between shoulders and heads to let us get close
enough to see and hear the prosecutor. To cut to a
detail shot is to brutally impose the point of view of
an author who stamps and imposes significations to be
accepted. To arrive at the close-up in between the other

views, and united to the others, adds another

perspective, contains another attitude thats more
coherent with what else is happening inside the frame,
and in the content itself. 8
This cinematographic language is more or less present in the
directors films posterior to Blood of the Condor and is in
some way the mark of Sanjins films.
As Blood of the Condor marks a precise moment in the
development of a cinematographic aesthetic, it also marks a
new political level. Besides the implications of a peoples
cinema opening up to their political participation, for the
first time Sanjins explicitly points out the principal enemy
of Bolivias indigenous society: North American imperialism
and its servant, the Bolivian state. In this sense, Blood of
the Condor completely distances itself from any kind of
Arguedian proposition and rather approaches Jorge Icazas
ideas in Huasipungo. Both that Ecuadorian novel and the
Bolivian film have narratives based on denouncing imperialist
manipulation and the way that it creates social conflicts
between indigenous communities and national states.
Huasipungo denounces the occupation of indigenous land by the
rich landholders of the region whose goal is to allow
exploitation by North American companies; Blood of the Condor
denounces the sterilization of Indian women performed by a
North American program for cooperation and development
(Alliance for Progress) 9 and the way such actions are done
with the collaboration of the Bolivian government.
However, Sanjins notably differs not only from
Huasipungo but also from indigenist literature before the
work of Jos Mara Arguedas; he uses a metaphor of blood to
replace that of the raped indigenous woman. Without leaving
the semantic space of violent fertility or sterilization,
Sanjins goes beyond the fact of violation/exploitation
itself in order to visualize its destructive extent and
consequently the social and cultural bleeding of the
indigenous and popular Bolivian social classes.10
Representing the loss of indigenous vitality in Blood of
the Condor are the sterilization of indigenous women without
their knowledge or consent and the blood loss of the Mallku
(leader of the indigenous community), wounded by the police
of the region and for whom no one can obtain blood in the
city. Sanjins denounces the double aggression to the
indigenous communities: against the women whom imperialism

sterilizes and against the men who try to defend them from
this violence. Imperialism and the national state share a
similar attitude of aggression toward the Indian. By means of
the blood metaphor, in Blood of the Condor this aggression
acquires its true dimensions, which include the following
social elements: racism against the Indians which originated
in idealistic colonial prejudices, such of those of blood
purity or of seeing the Indians as naturally sloths and
beasts; the national states disregard for indigenous life;
the negation of an indigenous communities future; and the
nations loss of social and cultural vitality.
In addition, Blood of the Condor indicates another theme
that will be fully explored in The Clandestine Nation: those
internal conflicts within the individual provoked by the
social and political systems to which that person is
subjected. For example, in Blood of the Condor, the womens
sterilization provokes conflicts in the indigenous couple, as
seen in the physical aggression of the drunk man against his
wife; or the protagonists brothers acculturation -pressured by the racism of the city environment, he denies
his Indian ancestry. That is to say, the movie shows the
consequences in the lives of individuals and a family as they
face troubles provoked by the political conflict between the
state (and North American imperialism) and the indigenous
community.
Sanjins later movies show a change of emphasis.
Leaving behind the conflicts of the individual protagonists,
the director focuses on exploring the possibilities of
political organization within indigenous communities. From
this, for example, comes his use of collective protagonists
and his use of dialogue about whether or not the tactics of
guerilla warfare serve a campesino struggle -- as in The
Principal Enemy. Similarly, The Flags of Dawn depicts periods
of democracy and the political organization and resistance of
the campesinos and workers. The impact of the socio-political
on the individual is developed once again in The Clandestine
Nation, but now with an added complexity. Now the narrative
takes up more than just one social front (the indigenous) and
questions all Bolivian social structure.
Returning in order to die,
dying in order to return
The thematic richness of The Clandestine Nation has to
do with the protagonists position in Bolivian society. In

Sanjins previous movies the protagonists, individual or

collective, belonged to a clearly defined and fixed social
group. Here, Sebastin Mamani, this movies protagonist, is a
drifter. He is a person who loses and then recovers his place
of origin. In this sense, with this film Sanjins does come
close to the work of the above mentioned novelist, Peruvian
Jos Mara Arguedas, by means of a narrative glance which
opens itself to opposite worlds.
Let me briefly summarize the films main plot. The
Clandestine Nation is the story of a rejection and of a
reconciliation. Sebastin Mamani abandons his community in
order to go and live in the city. There, with the will of
integrating himself into the white world, he changes his
name from Mamani, a typical indigenous last name, to Maisman,
a last name that sounds English. Yet this move and name
change do not change his social situation; little by little,
he senses his own corruption as he tries to gain access to
better economic and social conditions. In spite of his
efforts, Sebastin is used and despised by the city people
just for being Indian. His Indianness returns again and
again, like a stigma, to disturb his social and human
relations. When his life in the city gets to the point where
he cannot endure it any more, he decides to return to his
community. There he is assigned the leadership position
(Jilakata), but he cannot perform well because he has
forgotten the political concept of communal power and
authority. His contact with urban power and corruption has
marked and separated him from the practices of his community.
Sebastin makes unilateral decisions without consulting the
community and without taking their interests into account.
Moreover, his actions, like those of the government he
served, seek only to satisfy his personal interests.
Prosecuted by the community, he is expelled and threatened
with death if he tries to return.
At this moment, the protagonist is fractured since he no
longer has a social space to belong to. He is neither a
Bolivian citizen, with full rights and duties -- since hes
Indian; nor is he an organic part of the indigenous community
-- because he has been corrupted by the state power.
Sebastin returns to the city looking for a way to recover
his place among his own people. He realizes that it is only a
ritual, an ancient aesthetic ceremony -- the dance of the
Jacha Tata Danzante -- that can return him to his community.
But the price for such social restitution is nothing less
than his life. The dance that Sebastian chooses, executed in

times of starvation and as a sacrifice to appease the gods,

is performed until the dancer dies. With this dance,
Sebastin will redeem himself for betraying his community
and recuperate his place in that social space, if not in
lived reality then symbolically. The final scene shows us his
burial and -- as in El Grecos The Burial of Count Orgaz -in the films imagery Sebastin is among those who accompany
his own funeral courtege. A new Sebastin, redeemed, is
burying the old one -- victim and traitor at the same time.
Through Sebastins life and death of, the movie shows
the constitution of a national subject and not just the
awakening of an indigenous conscience, as in Sanjins other
films. One sees the constitution of that national subject in
Sebastians going astray, which permits the film to approach
and critique many of the social spaces and national
institutions that serve to construct subjects as good
citizens and true Bolivians. Thus, the script has Sebastin
serve in the army, an institution that inculcates in
indigenous conscripts the rejection of their ethnic identity;
and then it shows him as part of the governments secret and
repressive police, a space of even greater identification
with state values. These spaces move the protagonists further
and further away from his cultural roots but only partially
integrate him into a society where being Indian translates
into never being accepted as equal. Sebastins passage
through these institutions structure his identity as a
Bolivian but always with the condition of that he deny his
Indian origin. As these state systems educate citizens in
love of the country, in order to assure the formation of
good national subjects, they also inculcate a contempt for
indigenous social and cultural roots. The scenes of
Sebastins return to his village, when he already decided to
dance and die, illustrate how in all those spaces directly
related to the national state, there is an extreme ignorance
and denial of the values of the indigenous world.
Sanjins situates the protagonists final return during
an historical moment of social agitation and political
repression. On his return trip, in the middle of the
Altiplano, Sebastin is detained by the military who at first
see him as a subversive element -- as is to be expected, but
after realizing that he is only an Indian, they let him
pass. Further on, he encounters a leftist university leader
escaping from the military, but in spite of his protective
and paternalistic attitude toward this poor Indian, the
revolutionary young man cannot communicate with Sebastin as

an equal. Sanjins here emphasizes that neither political

wing, right or left, understand nor even less can create a
worthy social space for a Indian Bolivian citizen.
With The Clandestine Nation, Sanjins focuses on another
aspect of the Bolivian social condition absent from his
previous films: the condition of the mesticized and
transcultured Indian. The Clandestine Nation follows in a
long tradition of indigenous or Indian-mestizo narratives
that comprise a so-called heterogeneous current of Latin
American literature.
Although the heterogeneous literatures are
exceptionally complex, the concept that define them
is rather simple: they use literatures in which one
or more of its constituent elements correspond to a
socio-cultural system that is not what directs the
composition of other elements put into action in a
concrete process of production. (Cornejo Polar 60).
Precisely, if anything characterizes Guamn Poma de
Ayala, the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, the drummer Santos
Vargas, or Jos Mara Arguedas -- those most representative
writers of the Andean indigenous world, it is their living
and speaking from such a dualitys conflict, from such
cultural, political, and social heterogeneity. In this
tradition, The Clandestine Nation accomplishes for cinema
what Jos Mara Arguedas achieves for indigenous literature - to create a textual space that permits speaking of/from the
intersection of those two worlds without losing a profound
identification with the indigenous world. 11
For that reason, Sebastin Mamani is not easily
classified according to the typology of heroes in the Western
narrative tradition. He is not a victorious epic-hero nor a
problematic-bourgeois anti-hero (in Lukcs terminology), nor
a romantic character, rebellious and demonic. He is not an
ideal hero who conserves the indigenous worlds pure and
sacred values and fights westernized cultures
contamination. Nor does the Indian who denies his culture,
after having been assimilated to the westernized world,
become the worst enemy of that which is Indian -- as the
mestizo or mesticized Indian has usually been
represented.12
What makes Sebastin an extraordinary character is that,
subject to error and fall, in his wandering destiny he

discovers the place and value of his culture and his

community within the Bolivian nation. By surrendering his
life to his community, he is also offering his personal
experience as an Indian and as a Bolivian to constitute new
social subjects. At the end of the movie, we have a Sebastin
whose identity is shaped out of a series of identities that
he has been assuming in his trajectory through the spaces
which form the nation. In reality, the new Sebastin who
looks at the burial of the old Sebastin is a new subject. He
is not only indigenous but also national, nourished from his
native culture as well as from his experience with the
national state institutions. Sanjins seems to tell us that
the process of the successive reconstitutions of Sebastins
identity provides a new mold for the formation of national
subjects. That it is to say, it is a vision of those subjects
who can submerge themselves in the world of the state without
losing indigenous values or with the capacity of recuperating
them. In a Bolivian world, populated increasingly with
Sebastins, with cultural Yanakunas (wandering Indians who do
not belong to a particular community), that place-withoutplace is the privileged space from which one can formulate a
new national subject.
Yet, not all of the Sebastins know how to return to
their origins. The place of wandering and of passage through
state institutions does not guarantee modification of the
actual national subject. It is a position, on the contrary,
more vulnerable than one endorsed through fixed and
monolithic identities. However, it also offers more liberty
and knowledge and a better vision of the nation. For this
reason, the Sebastin that returns has more integrity than
the one who does not return or the one who does not even
leave the community.
From this perspective, the end of the movie acquires
another dimension. Which Sebastin is buried? Without doubt,
the Sebastin who could not return, who stayed trapped in the
corruption of power and who betrayed his own. Yet the new
Sebastin, the one who looks at his own burial, the one who
returns to recuperate indigenous values, is as different from
the one who is buried as from the one who left the community
to go to the city for the first time. In other words, what is
buried is the impossibility of being Indian and being
Bolivian at the same time. This new Sebastin now represents
something more than the world of the community. He represents
a more ample subject: the national subject.

Sanjins political proposal in The Clandestine Nation

is rather bold and does not have anything in common with the
tradition of literary Indigenism of Alcides Arguedas and
Jorge Icaza, nor with the leftist projects that since
Gonzlez Prada and Maritegui have tried to solve the
problem of the Indian in the state. Since the first years
of the independent nations in Latin America, for the state
and its critics (liberal, conservative, or leftist), the
Indian has been a problem and not a social sector or an
integral part of the nation. And this problem of the Indian
gets reduced to ideas about granting land and providing
education, seemingly technical solutions. These discourses,
of course, do not take into consideration the political,
social, and cultural values of the Indian. It is the state,
the social and political institution of governance
assimilated from the Western experience, that seems to serve
as the political and ideological frame in which to solve the
problems created by those uncomfortable, yet necessary,
groups. Be it a socialist or capitalist solution, the final
result is the same: the integration of the Indian into statenational machinery.
For Sanjins the situation is the opposite; that is to
say, he tries to think of the state-community relation in a
scheme different from the Western one. For the filmmaker, the
only possible form of Bolivian nationality now is one of
imagining the nation within the framework of Indian community
values, within the framework of moral and cultural relations
that the indigenous groups can propose to the Bolivian
community. The real problem is not the Indians nor their
communities but the fact that the state and the groups
associated with its political power cannot understand the
nation as a cultural, or better, as a multi-cultural
phenomenon. To imagine a Bolivian community from this
perspective acquires a new revolutionary reach, even more
profound than Sanjins proposals in his previous films.
The integral-sequence-shot in Sanjins politicalaesthetic discourse now acquires another meaning. It is more
than just a stupendous work of camera in constant movement.
It is the more adequate narrative resource for visual
translation of the circular conception of Aymara time, as
well as of the indestructible bond of the individual from
this culture with his social and natural environment (Susz
169). But above everything else, the integral-sequence-shot
is a profound form of knowing and understanding the larger
Bolivian reality.

As a matter of fact, Sebastins life is, in the form of

its contents (Hejmslev), like the very sequence shot that
integrates all Bolivian social spaces. Sebastins life
becomes the eye of the camera that adopts the points of view
by which and in which national subjects are constituted. This
eye goes accumulating in its gaze interrogations of the other
social actors with whom the protagonist enters into contact.
For this reason, Sebastins view is at the movies end a
heavy look, weighed down by the social dysfunction created by
the present national state. It is such a heavy load that the
only form of liberation is death. In order to accede to a
liberating death and not one of defeat, Sebastin resorts to
the ritual of his community, which brings with it the memory
of a cultural past. He seeks to free himself from a wandering
existence in which he has been kept from his desire to be
Bolivian and Indian at the same time. He needs to transform
this wandering to make it offer him a possible place to
formulate his self as a national subject. To that end, he
searches in his most intimate soul for a light, a
remembrance, a memory of his childhood that even his
community has forgotten. Thus appears, with its
reconciliatory power, the memory of the dance of Jacha Tata
Danzante.
With this dance, Sanjins introduces into his film the
memory of an ancient past, and he recuperates the long
memory, to use a concept developed by Silvia Rivera, that
goes further than recent history and back to the colony.
Thus, Sebastins moment of lucidity: when he is denied the
possibility of occupying neither of the two worlds he has
experienced in his life, he realizes what he has to do in
order to recuperate his cultural origins, to unload the heavy
experience of his life, to extract his body like one of the
aparapitas (Indian workers carrying loads in Bolivian
markets) that Jaime Saenz describes, and to open the doors to
the formation of a new national subject. This is also the
moment when he remembers the dance that he had seen when he
was very young. He recuperates an infantile memory and a
history before the creation of the Bolivian state. In his
gesture, awareness of the present and a memory of origin
unite and compliment each other. That is to say, his
awareness of his national identity needs to be rethought in
terms of his indigenous culture, his memory of his vital and
mythic foundations, and also his experience of the historical
present.
Works cited

Albo, Xavier y Josep M. Barnadas. La cara campesina de

nuestra historia. La Paz: UNITAS, 1985.
Arguedas, Alcides. Raza de bronce. Ed. Lorente Medina,
Antonio. Madrid: Unesco, 1988.
Arzns Orsa y Vela, Bartolom. Historia de la Villa Imperial
de Potos. Ed Hanke, Lewis y Gunnar Mendoza. Providence:
Brown University Press, 1965. 3 vols.
Caldern, Fernando y Jorge Dandler, ed. Bolivia: La fuerza
histrica del campesinado. Geneva/La Paz: UNRISD, 1986.
Cornejo Polar, Antonio. Literatura y sociedad en el Per: La
novela indigenista. Lima: Editorial Lasontay, 1980.
Espinal, Luis. El cine boliviano segn Luis Espinal. El
cine boliviano segn Luis Espinal. Ed. Carlos D. Mesa. La
Paz: Don Bosco, 1982. 134-135.
Galeano, Eduardo. Las venas abiertas de Amrica Latina.
Mxico: Siglo XXI, 1971.
Gumucio Dagrn, Alfonso. Historia del cine en Bolivia. La
Paz: Los Amigos del Libro, 1982.
Hess, John. Neo-Realism and New Latin American Cinema:
Bicycle Thief and Blood of the Condor. Mediating Two Worlds.
Cinematic Encounters in the Americas. Ed. King, John, Ana M.
Lpez and Manuel Alvarado. London: British Film Institute,
1993. 104-118.
Icaza, Jorge. Huasipungo. Barcelona: Plaza y Janes, 1991.
Lpez, Ana M. At the Limits of Documentary: Hypertextual
Transformation and the New Latin American Cinema. The Social
Documentary in Latin America. Ed. Julianne Burton.
Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990. 403-432.
Mesa, Carlos D. La aventura del cine boliviano: 1952-1985. La
Paz: Editorial Gisbert, 1985.
Rivera Cusicanqui, Silvia. Oprimidos pero no vencidos. Luchas
del campesinado aymara y qhechwa de Bolivia, 1900-1980. La
Paz: Hisbol-CSUTCB, 1984.

________________. Violencia e identidad(es) cultural(es) en

Bolivia. La Paz: CIPCA: Aruwiyiri, 1993.
Sanjins, Jorge, Dir. El coraje del pueblo [The Courage of
the People]. RAI. Grupo Ukamau, 1971.
_______________, Dir. El enemigo principal [The Principal
Enemy]. Obrero campesinos y estudiantes latinoamericanos,
1973.
_______________, Dir. Fuera de aqu. [Get Out of Here]. U. de
Quito. U. de los Andes. Grupo Ukamau, 1977.
_______________, Dir. La nacin clandestina. [The Clandestine
Nation]. Grupo Ukamau, 1989.
_______________, Dir. Ukamau [And So It Is]. Grupo Ukamau,
1966.
_______________, Dir. Yawar Mallku [Blood of the Condor].
Grupo Ukamau, 1969.
_______________ y Beatriz Palacios, Dir. Las banderas del
amanecer. Grupo Ukamau, 1982.
_______________. El pensamiento de Sanjins. Cmo concibe la
realidad el autor de La nacin clandestina. Facetas July
21 1991.
_______________ y Grupo Ukamau. Teora y prctica de un cine
junto al pueblo. Mxico: Siglo XXI, 1979. [There is an
English translation of this book: Theory and practice of a
cinema with people. New York: Curbstone Press, 1989]
Susz, Pedro. Filmo-videografa boliviana bsica (1904-1990).
La Paz: Cinemateca, 1991
Notes
1 Y es que la construccin de una nacin orgnica, sin
discriminaciones, integradora racial y socialmente, en la que
el conjunto de sus habitantes participe de los mecanismos que
generan decisiones; de aquella sociedad que vele por todos
sin emociones, que proporcione justicia y proteccin a todos,
que se enorgullezca de todos y no se avergence de nadie,
est pues todava lejos. (El pensamiento de Sanjins 4)
back

2 Bolivia is no exception to conceptualizing itself in terms

of the classic dichotomy of barbarians versus civilized
people that has dominated nation ideology in Latin America,
where the barbarians are unfailingly the Indians. In spite of
the importance and actuality of this dichotomy in Bolivia,
few works have been written dedicated to studying the traits
of ethnocentrism, racism, and eurocentrism in this society.
However, historical works about political relations between
state and indigenous community serve as an introduction to
this theme: Oprimidos pero no vencidos by Silvia Rivera,
Bolivia: La Fuerza histrica del campesinado, essays compiled
by Fernando Caldern and Jorge Dandler and La cara campesina
de nuestra historia by Xavier Alb and Josep M. Barnadas.
back
3 For the importance of the documentary technique in
Sanjins filmwork, see Ana M. Lopez article. back
4 It is interesting to note that in Huasipungo, the end is
also an indigenous revenge-revolt, like in Raza de bronce.
But in this work, the indigenous community is portrayed as
having much less consciousness of its unity than in Raza de
bronce. Thus, the final uprising in Huasipungo is not a
community decision but rather a collective act of desperation
initiated by the indigenous protagonist when the government
tries to take away their lands. In this sense, Huasipungo can
be ideologically situated between Raza de bronce and And So
It Is, because the individual actions in this novel end in
community social acts, although spontaneously and
disorganized. back
5 Gumucio Dagrn has indicated the confusion between race and
social class as part of the ideological inconsistencies of
And So It Is (226 and ss). back
6 se haba llegado a la conclusin de que era indispensable
dar una muestra de humildad proporcional a la prepotencia, al
desparpajo, al paternalismo con que el grupo haba actuado
hasta el momento en un medio en el que respeto por personas y
tradiciones era fundamental. ... [S]ometerse al veredicto de
la ceremonia del jaiwaco [ceremonia de ofrenda y vaticinio]-que se desarrollara en presencia y bajo la vigilancia de
todos los miembros de la comunidad de Kaata -- era la mejor
manera de rendir no slo un desagravio a la comunidad sino de
lograr la participacin colectiva de la misma en la decisin
sobre el destino del trabajo que el grupo propona realizar y

en la realizacin del mismo.... (Teora y prctica 30-31)

back
7 La comunicabilidad no debe ceder al facilismo simplista.
Para transmitir un contenido en su profundidad y esencia hace
falta que la creacin se exija el mximo de su sensibilidad
para captar y encontrar los recursos artsticos ms elevados
que puedan estar en correspondencia cultural con el
destinatario, que inclusive capten los ritmos internos
correspondientes a la mentalidad, sensibilidad y visin de la
realidad de los destinatarios. (Teora y prctica 59-60)
back
8 El movimiento de cmara interpretaba nicamente los puntos
de vista, las necesidades dramticas del espectador que poda
dejar de serlo para transformarse en participante. A veces
ese plano secuencia nos lleva hasta un primer plano
respetando la distancia de acercamiento que en la realidad es
posible, o bien, abrindose campo entre hombros y cabezas
para acercarnos a ver y or al fiscal. Cortar a un gran
primer plano era imponer brutalmente el punto de vista del
autor que obliga e imprime significancias que deben
aceptarse. Llegar al primer plano por entre los dems, y
junto a los dems, interpreta otro sentido, contiene otra
actitud ms coherente con lo que est ocurriendo al interior
del cuadro, en el contenido mismo. (Sanjins, Teora y
prctica 63-64) back
9 The Alliance for Progress was a program created by John F.
Kennedy through the Organization of American States in 1961.
The program lasted for ten years and it did not reach its
economic goals. It was also a major attempt by the U.S. to
ideologically fight communism in Latin America. Its obvious
imperialistic intention was strongly criticized by
politicians, artists, and intellectuals all over Latin
America. back
10 This metaphor will be used some years later by Eduardo
Galeano in his book, Las venas abiertas de Amrica Latina.
This book is full of metaphors of social and economic
bleeding. The metaphor, however, is not new; it is present in
some colonial texts, and notably in the Historia de la Villa
Imperial de Potos by Bartolome Arzns. back
11 The parallelisms between the Peruvian writer and Bolivian
filmmaker are notable. The Peruvian writer goes from a

limited representation of the Andean world, with no reference

to broader socio-political spaces, to the representation of
indigenous problems in the framework of the struggle against
imperialism (Cornejo Polar 80-88). The same occurs with
Sanjins and the transformation that goes from And So It Is
to The Principal Enemy and to The Clandestine Nation.
Equally, in spite of the growth of social or political space
represented, both Sanjins and Jose Maria Arguedas
inalterably maintain their first and most fervent
compromise with the Indian (Cornejo Polar 80-88). back
12 Not only J.M. Arguedas, but also Franz Tamayo, among
others writers in Bolivia, have contributed to create an
ideology that portraits the mestizo as an enemy or a
degradation of the Indian. For a discussion of the relations
between Indians and mestizos, and the impossibility of
defining the mestizo without making reference to its
belonging in higher or lesser degree to the Indian culture,
see: Violencia e identidad(es) culturales by Silvia Rivera.
back
-----------------------------------JC 44
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